Railroad passenger services, public or private?

The Transport Politic blog has a stupendous entry on the subject: HSR: Public or Private?

I've written about the European experience a bit myself, "US Federal Rail Policy: Learning from Worse Practices" and have linked to these resources in other entries:

-- privatization of British Rail (see "The Privatization of Public Utilities Can Be a Disaster" from the International Herald-Tribune)
-- contracting of railroad services for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (see the Boston Globe editorial, "Unreliable Rails.)